A well-researched and -written history that will satisfy both Eisenhower and Nixon aficionados.
Novelist and former New Yorker and Washington Post editor Frank (Trudy Hopedale, 2007, etc.) delves into political biography, focusing on the complicated relationship between President Dwight Eisenhower and his two-term vice president, Richard Nixon.
Though both private men from similar backgrounds, Eisenhower and Nixon differed in many ways. When Eisenhower chose Nixon, then a senator from California, as his running mate in 1952, it seemed to be more the choice of his advisers and one of political expediency, as a way to satisfy the right wing of the Republican Party. As Frank demonstrates, the pair’s long relationship was marked by “a fluctuating, unspoken level of discomfort,” and they were never close (even after Eisenhower’s grandson and Nixon’s daughter married in 1968). Frank points out how the eager Nixon felt “like a junior officer” in the presence of the war-hero president, who disliked Nixon personally and rarely enthusiastically supported him. Indeed, the author portrays Nixon’s vice presidency as often frustrating and stressful. In one engaging section, Frank describes how Eisenhower seriously considered removing Nixon from the re-election ticket, but he expressed it to Nixon in an unclear and passive-aggressive fashion; meanwhile, the president’s health issues made a Nixon succession a real possibility on multiple occasions. Throughout, Frank highlights the major events of the Eisenhower presidency, the following presidential elections and beyond, filtering them effectively through the lens of the Eisenhower-Nixon dynamic. The author does a fine job delineating the complex personalities of both men, and he provides novelistic touches befitting his background. At one point, he describes the colorful political figure Clare Boothe Luce as “beautiful, charming, and slightly mad,” and, at another, he thoughtfully compares Nixon to an Anthony Trollope character.
A well-researched and -written history that will satisfy both Eisenhower and Nixon aficionados.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4165-8701-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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